It is not only the timing of his death at the hands of U.S. forces that is apt, but also its location — far from a Middle East with which he had lost touch. He died in Pakistan . Or rather he died in the so-called AfPak theater where a decade of war has fed jihadist ideology even as it has lost appeal for Web-savvy Arab youth in the region of its birth.

An era has passed. It was a painful decade of disorientation and American whiplash . The mass murder so agonizing it had to be distilled to three digits — 9/11 — poisoned a new century at its outset. Bin Laden was that poison’s slow drip.

I was in New York City that day, at the bottom of Atlantic Avenue, by the East River, when a guy next to me said, “Hey, look, the World Trade Center’s on fire.” So, on a clear day, began the pulverizing horror that turned human beings to dust and shook Americans’ most basic assumptions about the land that morphed into a “homeland.”

Today I’m in Benghazi, where brave Libyans determined to forge a decent society battle an Arab despot, Muammar al-Qaddafi , the sometime terrorist and slayer of Americans who then claimed anti-Qaeda credentials to secure the support of the West.

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In fact, of course, his tyranny, which must end, has fed the very extremism he claimed to oppose. Bin Laden thrived on Arab despotism and on the American hypocrisy involved in supporting that repression.

He died as President Obama ’s America has made democratization in the Arab world at least a semi-serious U.S. objective for the first time. Effective counterterrorism does not lie in starving a whole region of basic rights. That much has been learned.

There is hope in this passage from the suicidal Arab rage of 9/11 to the brave resistance of Libya’s 2/17 Benghazi revolution — and the other revolutions and uprisings sweeping the region. A long road is left to travel — Al Qaeda is not dead — but the first step was the hardest: the breaking of the captive Arab mind, the triumph of engagement over passivity, the defeat of fear. Bin Laden’s rose-tinged caliphate was the solace of the disenfranchised, the disempowered and the desperate. A young guy with a job, a vote and prospects does not need virgins in paradise.

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America initially nourished Bin Laden’s ideology as a means to defeat the Soviet empire, before becoming its target. Neglect and end-of-history euphoria preceded devastating blowback. In the decade since then, there has been further blowback — from two punishing wars and from mistaken policy.

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This is a triumphant day for a young American president who changed policy, retiring his predecessor’s horrible misnomer, the Global War on Terror or G.W.O.T., in order to focus, laser-like, on the terrorists determined to do the United States and its allies harm. Bin Laden had enticed George W. Bush ’s flailing America into his web. Obama saw the need for extraction and engagement — extraction from the wars and engagement with the moderate Muslim majority.

The passage has been uneven but his achievements unquestionable. Open societies have this going for them over circles of fanatical conviction: they learn from mistakes.

How then to complete the work and make a corpse not only of Bin Laden but his movement? Oust Qaddafi with ruthlessness and in short order. Steer the Arab revolutions into port with consistent political support and funding. Arab democracy must also mean Arab opportunity.

End the war in Afghanistan as soon as America’s basic security requirements are met. Make America’s closest regional ally, Israel , understand that a changed Middle East cannot be met with unchanging Israeli policies. Palestine , like Israel, must rise to the region’s dawning post-Osama era of responsibility and representation.

The 2012 campaign just got less interesting. Obama, as I’ve written before, is a lucky man. I suspect luck and purposefulness do a two-term president make. Obama got Osama because he turned a wider tide.